weak 4

Well I knew it would get worse...this was a week when a bit of sympathy from the radiographer for my sore bum and telling me I'm doing well had me emerging from Linear Accelerator 1  visibly upset. Since then all the regulars in LA1 waiting room are twice as sweet to me as before . We've had fun too though-now Wimbledon has finished we guffaw to (how did I forget how funny they were?) old episodes of Only Fools and Horses on the waiting room TV at around 3 every afternoon.

I'm sitting like the Princess and the Pea on a pile of pillows to write this. But the radiographers all agree I am doing very well (my skin is holding out). The treatment has gone into phase two. The lymph glands are now done (the skin there is now what my old non PC granny from Cornwall would have called 'nigger brown' but it's intact). The radiation is now concentrated on the area of the tumour itself and attacks it full on and from each side. Radiation continues to work 10 days after it is administered and the effects build so I have worked out that: today I have
11 days till the end of my treatemnt
21 days till the effects cease to build
31 days till the side-effects have faded
As 11 is the easiest number to deal with that's the number I have chalked on my blackboard that gets decreased by one every day.
This week I also had a blood transfusion. My white blood cells and red blood cells are now back where they should be, I am no longer breathless when I speak and don't pass out suddenly on the sofa.
The pile of potions and lotions has grown but the things that work and that I use are

• blue bowl full of warm water , cotton wool, hairdryer, unguentum cream (basically home-made bidet). I may always do this!
• Ibobrufen 3x a day
• Paracetemol 8 per day
• aqueous cream-all the time

Christine is doing most of the cooking and cleaning and massages my feet to soothe me. Also soothing is the audiobook Corduroy mansions that Al downloaded for me and Mad Men DVD that Dave gave me and the Buddhist meditation tape that Christine gave me.
Yesterday I did something normal for the first time in ages-it was sunny and we drove to the Captain's Wife and had a ginger beer sat looking at the sea and I showed Christine the pretty house nearby I'd like to live in. Dreams Amelia...
On the way back we followed the sign for 'St Peter's Church open' and found a tiny ancient celtic church full of tiny ancient celts selling cakes, tea and plants (the bric a brac was rubbish: second hand bras and the like) so I had a bun with a mountain of glittery pink icing on it and a cup of tea while we sat on old chapel chairs in the sunshine and listened to the Deputy Chief Councillor make a speech about community. Then I  bought a bag of mixed lettuce (10p), a  yellow plant she said was Creeping Jenny but isn't(40p)-according to Al's encyclopaedia it is Garden Loosestrife,  a purple basil plant (15p), a geranium (colour and type unknown 10p)  and then we went home-real life-I love it.
This week's Spotify track is in celebration of  such delights, happened  upon by happy accident. One day Al and I were paying our annual respects to beautiful St david's cathedral and happened upon a rehearsal of  a work by Vaughan Williams, It was the most beautiful music I have ever heard by accident and in a cathedral music always sounds stupendous anyway. The work a plea for peace (written in time of war) it chimes with my vision of a more peaceful future for my lower half Dona Nobis Pacem.